Mar 13Some days I miss hanging out with my characters so much it hurts. Some of them were running though my mind a lot today. Maybe I’ll be able to use all this to write a really profound book one day. Either that, or croak early.

Mar 16Always glad to see Jenny McCarthy slammed for her unscientific and harmful beliefs on vaccines. Can we start on Gwyneth Paltrow now? Oh wait, she’s just criminally elitist and stupid, not a murderer.

Apr 10When did “alone” become synonymous with “lonely”? The two are quite distinct.

Apr 11The transport company that takes Mom to dialysis two days a week just called to say that in May they’ll charge $70 a ride not $30. I don’t know what we’re going to do. We can’t afford that, and the alternative is me missing a lot more work.

Apr 13Potentially hopeful news from the social worker yesterday about transportation for Mom to dialysis. Don’t want to say much for fear of jinxing.

No, I never engage in magical thinking, why do you ask?

Apr 14Let go and let the Universe. I now have three possible solutions to my mother’s dialysis transportation problems.

Apr 15I’m so old I remember having to get up and walk over to the TV to change channels.

Apr 18Me at the cafeteria: This morning I need a whisky muffin. Hold the muffin.

Apr 23A hornet’s nest found in an abandoned shed. The head is a part of a wooden statue it fused with.

Apr 24Maybe I should do as my spam suggests and get myself a Russian Bride. Of course, I might not be able to fulfill all her expectations. Too bad they don’t have a green card program for “domestic assistants.”

May 1The night air is full of jasmine crushed into luscious fragrance by the first heatwave of the year.

May 2Even the most shining hero is a human being with feet of clay. If we’d just remember this, there would be less anger in this society.

May 3The same government agency which made us prove my mom was married to my dad and that he had died needs us to prove it all over again 20 years later. Different department, you see. Apparently they’re unable to communicate with one another. Dealing with government agencies is a big component of caregiver fatigue. It wouldn’t be so bad except my dad’s death certificate has gone missing and L.A. County takes 4 weeks to get a new one.

May 3Or maybe I won’t have surgery in 2 weeks. If I put it off this time, it will be 2 times.

May 17Ironic or psychosomatic? I wrenched my knee on the very day my surgery would have taken place. Not the one that would have been operated on, either. My other knee which has as many problems and will need its own surgery someday.

May 21I’m at the bargaining with the Universe stage. That can’t be good.

May 22My friend and I were just saying that the next Survivor should feature an all-geriatric group of contestants.

“If your team all successfully completes your challenge, you will be given your meds as usual. If not…”

And complaint marathons to see who lasts the longest. That competition is expected to go on for days.

May 22I can hear a train whistle every once in awhile late at night. It’s always wonderful. I don’t know where it comes from. There are no trains closer than five miles, but I guess that sound carries. Either that, or it’s the ghost of a train which once ran just down the hill from where I live.

When I was a kid I used to follow those tracks from Venice, once all the way into Culver City. The trains only ran once a month late at night to keep the access rights. Eventually, they gave those up but the rails remained for years afterwards, partially covered in blacktop in some places. They’re all gone now, alas.

There is so much that is gone. Venice is a highly urban place now but once was full of open fields, trains, horse stables. I’ve seen them all go in such a short span of time. A lifetime. Palimpsests. They’re everywhere I look, all over Venice.

What to do with aged photos when you’re cleaning out an old person’s home and none of the faces are familiar?

There’s a market for them in flea markets and online, of course. Probably other places as well, but that’s what I’m familiar with. I admit to being conflicted by the idea. There are buckets of photos my mother has held onto for years, ranging from the 1920s to near-present. A lot of them are from World War II when my mother worked as a riveter at Douglas Aircraft. Periodically we go through some of them so she can tell me who the people are and I can pencil it in on the back, but some of the faces are beyond even her at this point. And even if I know their names…they have no context for me. They’re just names.

Eventually, someone will have to deal with these—if not me, then whoever cleans out my place when I’m gone. It seems disrespectful to sell them, yet that’s probably less disrespectful than consigning them to the trash. Which happens. A coworker told me of that very thing occurring when her friend cleaned out her parents’ home. I explained about the market for old photos and she was amazed.

“If only my friend had known!”

If only.

If only other people’s memories could be held as sacred as our own. But that’s the nature of time and change. We hold what we have inside our hearts and when our hearts fade, so do the memories. As the African proverb says, “Every time an old person dies, a library burns to the ground.”

Here’s my mother, Donna (left), and Aunt Earlda just after they came out to Los Angeles in 1942 to work as riveters for McDonald-Douglas in Santa Monica. I thought it a fitting picture to post on Labor Day as those gals labored mightily to help the war effort. Also, they’re just so damned cute!

Do you know a woman who worked on the home front during World War II, even if it was volunteer work? They, or their daughters and other family, may be eligible to join the American Rosie the Riveter Association. Mom and I are members.

My mother’s 90th birthday is coming up soon (April 7) so I wanted to do something special for her. Her surrogate sons and daughters and I are giving her a little party on April 9, but I wanted a nice surprise for her, too. For her 80th birthday, I made her a book, and I didn’t want to repeat myself. So I found some pictures, wrote some captions, and our own hominysnark of F-bod Studios took them and turned them into lovely wearable art (Mom loves her some sweatshirts). I’m so happy with them I wanted to share—but shhh! Mom doesn’t know, so don’t tell her.

Mom making kissy face with a starling

Mom riding the range (or, rather, the marshes that are now Marina del Rey)

I realized that I never did finish posting my pictures from England, 2004. I hadn’t scanned them all, you see. I bought a nice scanner with the idea of gradually converting my vast library of photographs taken with my Canon AE-1, but it’s been a little (a lot) more gradual than I’d visualized.

I didn’t get many pictures of Avebury this trip. In fact, the three on this page are it. I took a couple of rolls on a previous trip, but this day the rain poured down (ah, spring in England)—hence the “ghosts” surrounding Lynn. We spent a lot of time in various gift shops, the museum, and the cafeteria, where I had a wonderful vegetable hash and hot tea that took the chill off. That meal was the highlight of the day and I still remember how good it tasted after being so thoroughly drenched and chilled to the bone.

At least we didn’t have to pay for parking. A gentleman who had purchased an all-day parking ticket decided it was too rainy to be worth it and gave it to us instead. Bonny gentleman!

Ann, who had gone off for a few days to visit a friend elsewhere, didn’t say so but I’m sure she thought our drenching was no better than we deserved for sneaking off to Avebury without her.

The spring lambs sheltering against one of the great stones. They were smarter than we were, but poor Lynn had never been to Avebury so we gave it a game try. She didn’t get to see much and almost got ran over by a git in a speeding roadster.

I’m glad I chose such a wide stone to rest against. In case you can’t tell, my jeans from the coat hem down are absolutely saturated.

I’ve always enjoined taking pictures of shadows, loved watching their changing dynamic as the day progresses. I have quite a lot of shadow plays in my collection. I just came across these. Click on the individual picture for a larger view.